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Anyone encounter any fraud crowdfunding project? How to deal with it?

2 points by nixsiow ↗ HN
Has anyone encounter any similar case before? How do you deal with fraud happened on famous crowdfunding platform eg. kickstarter, indiegogo, etc..

p.s. Already report on the site but no action taken nor any response from them

I have one here. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/matchstick/matchstick-the-streaming-stick-built-on-firefox-os/comments

- delay for over 6 months - never response to backers

2 comments

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ratfacemcgee
had a similar experience with the Gamestick on kickstarter. unfortunately, kickstarter basically put their hands up and say "welp, you're on your own". after emailing them constantly, they eventually agreed to send me the item in question (the rewards had shipped except for about 1% of them, and I was in the 1% that didn't ship for whatever reason), but that was about a year after the rewards originally should have shipped.

there is at least 1 example of action being taken [1] against a dodgy project though. Im not sure of the details, but I think it consisted of coordinated effort from a lot of the backers.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2015/06/crowd...

746F7475
As I've understood this whole crowdfunding thing the "starters" who are asking for money are under no obligation to actually provide functional products to the "backers".

They just estimate how much money they are going to need and make best effort and then if they are able to they bring the product to market and give out any units they've managed to sell during the crowdfunding process.

I think even Kickstarter states that it is not a store where you can buy stuff. It's a place where you can fund people to realize their dreams and you might get something out of it at the end.